and speech delay rears it's ugly head

note: this sort of turned into a small written release of frustration for me.

Sometimes I hate this nasty speech delay thing. Okay, maybe all the time. I am frustrated for her. I am frustrated because people hear her talk and think she isn't as capable as he really is. I am frustrated because she thinks she can't when she can. I am frustrated that I have to make her work harder than everyone else her age just to listen to sounds word make. I am frustrated that I don't even want to go the "B" and "V" road anytime soon, because I think she will throw something at me.

It's not just articulation errors. It's articulation errors that result from something not going right with her phonemic awareness (her speech teacher referred to her as a phonology kid).


It reared it's ugly head the other day when we were matching sounds. She had a picture of a kangaroo and I gave her two choices on her board: K or T? One: I should have known not to do this. "Kitty-Cat" is a later word to practice because it is hard for most speech kids to master the k sound and t sound in the same word. I think she really heard does it start with a "t" or a "t."

She can train herself to hear the difference, but it's not easy. She says Atti-C-us all the time now and not Atti-T-us. This is a huge deal for us. She's been working on her k sound all year.

I need to frequently remind myself has far she has come, instead of thinking about how much further we have to go. 2 years ago, she would hardly talk, unless she really needed something. Now she talks all the time. She puts long sentences together, asks questions, answers quickly. She retells stories and follows multi-step directions (although I wonder if that was every a problem of speech or choice). I can listen to her stories when she plays now.

Now we get to join our Rainbow Sunshine Girl in her magical fairy-unicorn-dinosaur land!